PCE moved forward rapidly in Feb, no doubt raising tracking forecasts for Q1GDP. Importantly, it seems that while the decline in energy consumption has slowed, it has not reversed.
Regardless of what happens with the weather we should expect the official measures of energy consumption to turn north hard as the winter passes. In short, low heating during the winter cut deeply into consumer spending measures.
However, as we pass into the Spring the seasonal adjustment will except heating expenses to fall away anyway, so it will no longer count against consumer spending estimates. This will be reflected as boom.

2 comments
Comments feed for this article
Sunday ~ April 1st, 2012 at 4:49 pm
anoncubed
Do me a favor, Smith.
Regardless of what happens with the weather we should expect the official measures of energy consumption to turn north hard as the winter passes.
What does that mean?
So households saved $10 billion on their natural gas bills in the 2011-12 winter means that their wallets and purses open on April Fool’s Day. You are an effing idiot! Ya see, $10 billion divided by $11 trillion is eff all.
Listen bud. If you wanna be a wannabe economic forecaster, go work for Wells Fargo or Bank of America or whatever in North Carolina. They look for young smartypants who usually retire as young shittypants back to the chickens and horses back on the farm.
Sunday ~ April 1st, 2012 at 8:14 pm
notes on the ACA arguments, january’s home prices, & february’s personal income & outlays | r.j.'s space
[...] the Personal Income and Outlays for February from the BEA; personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which most focused on, increased 0.8% for the month; this bodes well for 1st quarter GDP, since consumer spending is [...]